B.C.’s museum at the crossroads

John Mackie, Vancouver Sun01.24.2014

Jack Lohman is head of the Royal B.C. Museum and has written a book called Museum at the Crossroads.Arlen Redekop
/ Vancouver Sun

Immigration Office Wall Pieces with Chinese Poems
This most important collection testifies to Victoria’s and BC’s significant role as the gateway from Asia-Pacific to Canada in the early twentieth century and documents early Chinese immigrants’ first experience in Canada, their aspirations and sorrows.
/ Vancouver Sun

Princess Mary Christmas Gift
“Best Wishes for a Victorious New Year from the Princess Mary and Friends at Home.” In November 1914, HRH Princess Mary began the Sailors & Soldiers Christmas Fund to provide a Christmas gift for those separated from their families. Smokers received a pipe and tobacco, or cigarettes and a lighter. Non-smokers received a pencil, a writing pad and sweets. Indian troops received sweets and spices. Nurses got chocolate. 355,000 were delivered by Christmas and by war’s end 2.5 million were distributed.
/ Vancouver Sun

Laphria fernaldi (Order Diptera: Family Asilidae) Bee-like Robber Fly
All Robber Flies are fierce predators of other insects. This genus mimics bumblebees by being very hairy and similarly coloured. The entomology collection includes more than 5,200 Robber Fly specimens from different locations in British Columbia. RBCM ENT998-004667 [PNG Merlin Archive]BB CARLO-MOCELLIN SHANE LIGHT
/ Vancouver Sun

Cornwallius sookensis tooth
This 25-million-year-old molar came from a large plant-eating mammal that swam in Pacific Coastal water off Vancouver Island. This first specimen – the holotype for the genus – was described and deposited by Ira Cornwall in the early 1920s.
/ Vancouver Sun

Manuscript, Pilot Episode of The X-Files
This hit TV series brought international attention to Vancouvers film and television industry. This pilot script is displayed in a case filled with items from the 1990s.
/ Vancouver Sun

Haida Frontlet
Once part of a headdress adorned with flicker feathers, sea lion whiskers and a train of ermine skins. The crouching figure wears a dance apron and crown and may represent a shaman. Attributed to artist Simeon sdiihldaa (1799-1889) of Old Massett.
/ Vancouver Sun

Model Sealing Canoe
This model sealing canoe was collected at Quatsino Sound, 1928-30. Models like this were often made for both the souvenir and ethnographic trade.BB CARLO-MOCELLIN SHANE LIGHT
/ Vancouver Sun

Emily Carr, Kitwangar Pole
Strong cubist shapes in the pole, house and greenery reflect the influence of Seattle artist Mark Tobey. This short-lived cubist phase gave Carr a different way of looking at nature, an important first step in developing her own style. Oil on canvas, about 1928.
The Royal BC Museum has 1,200 Emily Carr items.
/ Vancouver Sun

Dr. Ida Halpern’s Field Recorder and Recordings
Ida Halpern was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, with a doctorate in music of the folk from the University of Vienna. She became an accidental student of West Coast First Nations culture through languages and music unlike any shed ever heard. Beginning in 1947 with an invitation from Chief Billy Assu to come to Cape Mudge, Halpern made more than 340 recordings that are now in the BC Archives, including those with notable artists and leaders Mungo Martin, George Clutesi, Dan Cranmer and Stanley Hunt.
/ Vancouver Sun

VICTORIA -- Between 1850 and 1854, Vancouver Island Governor James Douglas negotiated 14 treaties with local First Nations.

Royal BC Museum CEO Jack Lohman was stunned when he found out the Victoria institution still had the original documents tucked away on a shelf. He applied to have them added to the Memory of the World, UNESCO’s register of important world heritage objects.

“These 14 extraordinary pre-Confederation treaties (are) written in sort of Charles Dickens handwriting, (and) have pieces of bark where the First Nations signed them,” he marvels. “The First Nations signed them with pieces of plants. They’re extraordinary ethno-botany testaments.”

The Douglas Treaties aren’t the only hidden gems at the Royal BC Museum, which has seven million items in its collection. Lohman thinks it’s one of the world’s great unknown museums.

He should know — he’s worked all over the world. The 55-year-old came to Victoria in 2012 after a decade at the Museum of London (England, not Ontario).

Before the London gig he was the chief executive of the Iziko Museums of Cape Town, South Africa, a collection of 15 national museums. For the last six years he was chairman of the board of the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland. He’s a professor in museum design at Bergen National Academy of the Arts in Norway, and the editor in chief of a Museums and Diversity series put out by UNESCO. He’s currently assisting four museums in Qatar in the Middle East.

Asked how many languages he speaks, he smiles.

“Supposedly 12, but if you heard my Portuguese ... if I speak Portuguese, people assume I’m Brazilian,” replies Lohman, who was born in London to Polish immigrant parents.

“I do like languages. I haven’t got round to Haida. I said I’d learn a Northwest Coast (native language), I’ll go do that in the summer.”

So when Lohman says he wants to bring the Royal BC Museum to the world stage, he means it. He’s even written a new book laying out his vision, Museums at the Crossroads.

The 268-page book looks at how museums should adapt to the changing times.

“The book is about the choices that institutions make,” says the personable Lohman, who named a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire on the Queen’s birthday in 2012.

“The good choices, the bad choices, the long-term choices. It’s about looking at how you reinvent museums. And really the sort of central, dominant message is ultimately museums are not a sideshow.

“They are a right, like education, like health, like justice, like law. They have a transformative power over individuals, and they allow us to lead better lives, ultimately.”

Lohman feels many museums are in need of “rescripting.” A good example is the Museum of London, which he took over in 2002.

“In the case of the Museum of London, the narrative stopped in 1914,” he says.

“Can you imagine, a city museum where you don’t talk about the two world wars or the postwar reconstruction, the great moments (like) Diana’s funeral — there are all these great amazing events that have happened. Three Olympic Games.

“All those things were just not written in there. So clearly it was ‘Come on guys, we’ve got to tell the story here, we’ve got to bring it up to date.’”

The Royal BC Museum starts its own “rescripting project” next week. Lohman and his staff will be going through the museum, asking “What is the meta-narrative here, what is the story, what are we actually telling people?”

“You’re respecting the beauty of the museum, the style, the extraordinary dioramas, but you’re looking at the script,” he explains.

“The script is now 50 years old, so much as you’d update a textbook, (you update the museum script). You wouldn’t use a textbook your grandmother had been using.”

It’s timely to look at the Royal BC Museum, because there are two big anniversaries coming up — the 150th anniversary of confederation in 2017, and the 150th anniversary of British Columbia joining Canada in 2021.

Lohman thinks the Royal BC Museum was well run when he arrived, but a bit “flat-footed.”

“In a way it needed to have a little more magic sprinkled over it, if you like, some sparkle brought back to it,” says Lohman.

“It’s part of plugging into the energy that already exists in this province, and being part of that energy, rather than operating in its own vacuum. And really talking up the collections.”

Lohman wants the Royal BC Museum to engage with British Columbians by taking its collections around the province, rather than just keeping them in Victoria. Sometimes this means lending them to other institutions — many of the key pieces in the landmark Charles Edenshaw exhibition currently on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery come from the Royal BC Museum.

“I absolutely insisted we contribute anything they want us to contribute,” he says.

“That is our attitude. We’ve got to get the material out. We want to become a world-class museum. There’s no point sitting on the treasures. You’ve got to make sure they’re working, and constantly adding to public value.”

He also wants to raise the museum’s international profile. Many of the paintings at an upcoming Emily Carr exhibition in London will be from the Royal BC Museum, which has 1,200 works by Carr in its collection.

He credits the staff at the museum with educating him about the collection.

“I have to give all credit to my curators and archivists and scientists, because I asked them each in for a meeting and said ‘Please bring whatever you think is really important and show it to me,’” he recounts.

“The whole idea is that every Thursday morning I sit down with an object. I have to look at objects — that’s why you work in a museum, that’s part of the joy, looking at collections.

“But you’re also looking at the potential of the team you’ve got. For me, it’s about amplifying the creativity of your team. Your stimulus package, if you like, is about ratcheting up people’s energy levels, and reminding them of the direction.”

The direction is to come up with “public output” in the form of an exhibition, a publication or a website.

“They don’t turn to textbooks, they look to museums. In a way we must be leaders. We can’t just sort of sit back and not update, not tell the stories. We’ve got a program focusing on British Columbia. We’ve actually mapped something out over the next 10 years, that’s how far ahead we’re already thinking.”

To that end, the Royal BC Museum has been working on an exhibition to mark the anniversary of the 1855 Fraser River Gold Rush. And Lohman is very excited about a forthcoming exhibit of the work of Frederick Dally, an English photographer who came to B.C. in 1862 and photographed the Cariboo Gold Rush.

“We have all his albums, apart from the one that’s at Windsor Castle,” says Lohman.

“Imagine, he’s carrying his glass plates (and cumbersome photo equipment) on a mule up the Cariboo wagon trail as it’s being built. He’s only got 21 pieces of glass.

“He’s making his decision about which 21 photographs he’s going to take, going up to Barkerville. So when he stops at the chasm (near Clinton), he decides ‘My God, this is so dramatic, I’m going to use one of my 21 good wishes here.’

“And so there are 21 photographs from his trip in (the 1860s). This is just after the invention of photographs. Where are those photographs? In the Royal BC Museum. Has anyone seen them? No. Have they been published? No.

“I’ve got Canada’s best curator of photography, Joan Schwartz, and I’ve asked her to curate a show: ‘I want you to put Frederick Dally on the map.’ Not just in Victoria, globally.

“Why doesn’t the world know about these photographs? They’re so important.”

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.

Share

B.C.’s museum at the crossroads

Video

Today's News

Best of Postmedia

To steel himself for the year-long journey that began Wednesday, Jonathan Pitre has been going over the hard calculus that underpins his decision to pursue a high-risk, high-reward treatment in Minnesota

When he woke up in tears the morning after he had cried himself to sleep, Rohit Saxena knew what he had to do. Leaving his wife, Lesley, asleep in bed, Rohit went downstairs, opened his laptop and began to write. “They say your kids are your hearts outside your body,” he wrote. “I’ll always be […]

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.